Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/32

 bertus, whose whole theory of social reform in 1842 is fashioned according to the Prussian State pattern of that time, refers everything to the judgment of the bureaucracy, which authoritatively determines the share of the worker in the product of his own labor, and graciously abandons that part to him. Then rent and profit must also continue to exist. In fact, the landed proprietors and the industrial capitalists do fulfil certain functions, socially useful, or even necessary, although economically unproductive, and receive in exchange a kind of remuneration, rent and profit—which is a conception scarcely new, even in 1842. Truth to tell, they receive very much too much for the little that they do, and which they do sufficiently ill; but Rodbertus has need of a privileged class, at least for 500 years to come, also the rate of surplus-value, to express myself correctly, that must also exist, but without being capable of being augumentedaugmented [sic]. Rodbertus accepts as the actual aggregate of surplus value, 200 per cent., that is to say, that for a daily labor of twelve hours the worker will not receive a certificate of twelve hours, but one of four hours only, and the value produced in the remaining eight hours must be shared between landlord and capitalist. The labor-notes of Rodbertus lie then, absolutely, but it is necessary to be a Pomeranian feudal proprietor to imagine that there is a working class to whom it would be advantageous to work twelve hours to obtain a labor-note of four hours. If the juggleries of capitalist production were translated in this simple manner, in which it appears as a manifest theft, it would be rendered impossible. Each labor-note given to the worker would be a direct provocation to rebellion, and would fall within the scope of section 110 of the penal code of the German Empire. It is necessary never to have seen any